


Put Your Heart In My Hand

by Slow_Burn_Sally



Category: What We Do in the Shadows (TV)
Genre: Candy Hearts, M/M, Pining, Valentines Day Prompt From Tumblr, WWS21, Who We Smooch In The Shaddows, hand holding, nandor is a himbo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-15 10:53:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29434890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slow_Burn_Sally/pseuds/Slow_Burn_Sally
Summary: Guillermo discovers the first candy heart on his pillow. He opens his eyes one late afternoon in early February and sees it, a small, pink, heart shaped lump of sugar, sitting close enough so that it shows up as a pink blur without his glasses on.
Relationships: Guillermo de la Cruz/Nandor the Relentless
Comments: 11
Kudos: 40





	Put Your Heart In My Hand

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for the Tumblr Valentines Day Fanworks Challenge "What We Smooch In The Shadows" It was a lot of fun!
> 
> I took the prompts "conversation hearts" and "hand holding"

Guillermo discovers the first candy heart on his pillow. He opens his eyes one late afternoon in early February and sees it, a small, pink, heart shaped lump of sugar, sitting close enough so that it shows up as a pink blur without his glasses on. He sits up, rubs at his face and reaches for his glasses before picking the small candy up between forefinger and thumb and squinting at it.

“Be Mine” it says, in purple letters across the front. 

Guillermo has seen these little hearts his whole life of course. Every Valentine’s Day, there's always little dishes of them strewn about in people’s houses and on sale at the local convenience store. They’re kind of ubiquitous. 

So the heart itself isn’t what’s unusual. What’s unusual is that it’s shown up on his pillow, in a house full of blood sucking (and in one instance, energy sucking) vampires. Who put it there? None of the vampires have what Guillermo would call a ‘soft side’. They aren’t big on gifts. Or compliments. Or common decency really. Not the kind of people who leave candies on pillows. Especially not ones with sweet sayings on them.

His mind leaps immediately to Nandor. It isn’t Nandor of course, because Nandor spends his whole day bossing Guillermo around, but Guillermo  _ wants _ it to be Nandor. 

Putting the candy heart out of his mind for the time being, he gets up, gets dressed and heads downstairs to start his evening. He sleeps during the day mostly, because Nandor doesn’t need him during the day, but every once in a while, he has to pull an all dayer to get some grocery shopping done, go to the doctor, or just see the sunshine for longer than an hour. 

He goes first to his master’s coffin room to wake him up. 

“Master…” Guillermo whispers, tapping gently on the lid of Nandor’s coffin. “Master...it’s time to get up.” Waking Nandor is a long process that must be done slowly and carefully, otherwise, the six foot tall vampire gets really grumpy. Or well, more grumpy than usual. “Master, it’s me, Guillermo. Wake up.” He taps a little bit harder and hears a moan from inside. 

This is his cue to slowly lift the lid of the coffin just a little bit and try to coax Nandor out. “Master,” he whispers into the crack. “The sun has set. It’s time to wake up.”

Finally, Nandor groans and wriggles around a little before sitting up, pushing the coffin lid the rest of the way open as he does. Guillermo steps back and lets Nandor get accustomed to being conscious. He watches him rub his eyes, stretch, and execute a big, loud yawn, showing off his sharp, pointy teeth in the process.

“Good morning Guillermo,” he says.

“Good morning master.”

“I’m hungry, Guillermo. Go and fetch me a virgin.” 

“Master, you had plans to go out tonight with Nadja and Laszlo to find virgins, at that new club downtown. Remember?” Guillermo is of the opinion that the vampires would have a far better chance of finding actual virgins at libraries or maybe sci fi conventions. Places he and his friends used to hang out, but he knows they like to be seen in glamorous hot spots, so he keeps this to himself. And besides, they’d stand out like sore thumbs at the Staten Island Public Library. All except Collin Robinson of course, who would probably thrive on asking the librarians long, pointless questions about the Dewey Decimal System. 

The vampires would probably make a killing, (no pun intended) passing themselves off as Bram Stoker or Interview cosplayers at one of the area’s cons, but he knows they’d get bored and wander off when faced with the prospect of spending the weekend around a bunch of “nerds”. He’s never met a group of undead blood suckers as snobby as Nandor, Laszlo and Nadja. 

“Oh, yeah. OK. Thank you for reminding me,” Nandor says, his voice pulling Guillermo from his musings on the best virgin hunting grounds.

Nandor appears to be in a better mood than usual. Even saying ‘thank you’, a thing he rarely does. He gets up and imperiously holds out a hand for Guillermo to help him descend the steps from his coffin, and Guillermo eagerly takes it. He loves when he gets to touch his master. Whether it be helping him down from his coffin, or brushing his long, lustrous, black hair, or wiping a blood smear off his forehead that he didn’t catch because he can’t look in the mirror. 

Nandor heads off to go hang out with Nadja and Laszlo and Guillermo begins his long list of nightly chores. 

Later that week, he finds another heart. This one says, “Cue-T-Pie” in pink on purple. It sits on the sink by his toothbrush cup. He’s perplexed. Where are these hearts coming from? They’re obviously meant for him. Otherwise they wouldn’t be showing up in places very personal to Guillermo. But who is leaving them? 

It  _ must _ be Nandor. 

Yes, Nandor is often grumpy with him. Yes, Nandor insults him and makes fun of him and tells him he could be doing a better job. But also… Nandor is the closest to him. They know each other really really well after having an (unpaid) working relationship for a decade now. Who else could it be? Guillermo feels his heart beat faster as he pops the small, purple candy into his pocket and heads to the kitchen to wash a pile of blood stained coffee mugs. 

Two days later, there’s a third heart, a yellow one with red writing. It says “Fool-4-U”. This one is sitting atop the toe of his sneaker on the floor in the corner of his room. 

Valentine’s Day arrives, and Guillermo wakes to find there’s yet another heart, this one perched on top of his battered copy of  _ The Tail of the Body Thief _ on his bedside table. It’s white and reads “You Rule” in red. Guillermo decides it’s time to approach Nandor and try to figure out if it’s him who’s been leaving the hearts. This is a delicate matter, and so he can’t just come out and ask. He has to be very subtle. This is fine, because Guillermo is a master of subtlety. When you live with three people who will get completely bent out of shape over the smallest thing, you learn to tread lightly. By comparison, Collin Robinson is pretty easy going, but Guillermo never wants to talk to Collin Robinson, so there’s that.

He heads downstairs and sidles his way into the vampire’s sitting room. Nadja and Laszlo are together on the love seat, arguing about the French Revolution, and which one of them killed more aristocrats, and Nandor is sitting on the couch, scowling down at his cell phone. Collin Robinson is thankfully nowhere in sight. 

Guillermo steps up to Nandor and clears his throat. Nandor doesn’t look up. “Um… master?” Guillermo says cautiously. 

“Yes Guillermo, what is it?” Nandor snaps.

“Did anyone buy a bag of those candy hearts recently? You know, the ones the convenience stores sell for Valentine’s Day?”

“What are you talking about?” Nandor peers up at him, looking insulted at being dragged away from his game of Farmville. Never mind that it took Guillermo three solid months to teach Nandor how to operate the phone at all, let alone play games on it.

“Little candy hearts,” Guillermo prompts him. “Did anyone buy a bag recently?” 

Nandor frowns. “No. No one bought a bag of  _ candy hearts _ Guillermo. I don’t know why you’d bring up such a preposterous idea. We’re  _ vampires _ … not-” Guillermo can see him rifling through his spotty internal dictionary of pop culture terminology, “ _ Care Bears _ ,” he finishes with a sneer. 

“Oh, OK. It’s just that I’ve been finding them lying around and I wondered if-”

“No one has bought candy hearts!” Nandor shouts, loud enough to interrupt Laszlo and Nadja’s aristocrat murder spree conversation. 

“What’s all this then?” Laszlo asks, “trouble in paradise?” he elbows Nadja and the two of them chuckle at his 400th joke about Nandor and Guillermo being an old married couple. Guillermo feels his cheeks getting hot. 

“It’s nothing,” Nandor replies, seeming far too irritated over a simple question. “Guillermo is just being stupid.”

“Stop being stupid Gizmo!” Laszlo says cheerfully, before he and Nadja get up and wander out of the room to go find something more entertaining to do. 

Guillermo sighs. Sometimes living with four vampires is not as glamorous or as enjoyable as he’d hoped. “Alright master,” he says, looking down at his feet and feeling awkward. “Is there anything you need at the moment?”

“Yes actually,” Nandor says. “My hand hurts.”

“I’m sorry what?” This is a complaint Guillermo hasn’t heard from Nandor before.

“I said my hands hurts. I want you to massage it for me.” 

“Oh… OK.” Guillermo isn’t sure why Nandor is asking him for a hand massage, but he’s not about to give up an opportunity to touch his master. He sits down next to Nandor on the couch and gingerly takes his hand. He begins squeezing Nandor’s hand, (which is enormous compared to his own, smaller, chubbier one) and kneading Nandor’s palm with his thumbs. Nandor lets out a happy sigh and puts down his phone. “Ah. Thank you Guillermo. That feels nice,” he says. 

Guillermo tries not to drop Nandor’s hand in surprise. This is the second ‘thank you’ he’s received in a month. He glances over at the window, just in case he can catch a glimpse of pigs flying by. 

As he continues to rub Nandor’s hand, Nandor turns into a big, black silk and brown satin puddle of happiness. He sighs. He moans. He lets his head fall back against the pillows and closes his eyes. Guillermo is overjoyed that his simple hand massage (he’s no masseuse), has made his master so happy and relaxed. 

Eventually, he sort of runs out of steam, and trails off with the motions of the massage. It feels really nice to sit there and just clasp Nador’s hand, and so he doesn’t move to get up right away. He’s shocked when a moment later, Nandor turns his hand and interlaces their fingers. Guillermo freezes and holds his breath, afraid that if he draws any attention to what’s just happened, Nandor will snap out of the trance he’s apparently fallen under and snatch his hand away. 

But Nandor only picks his phone back up and lazily scrolls through Facebook, (an account Guillermo helped him set up a few months ago so he could stalk potential victims) with his thumb not saying anything or looking at Guillermo. His hand stays where it is. They sit together in silence for a few blissful minutes, and Guillermo looks down in awe at where his smaller, browner fingers are interlaced with Nandor’s larger, whiter ones, and feels his heart swell with excitement and affection. 

Eventually, they hear the clump clump of Nadja and Laszlo’s high heeled boots approaching and Nandor guiltily pulls his hand out of Guillermo’s grasp. “Thank you Guillermo,” he says. That will be all for now.”

“Ok Master. Let me know if you need anything else.” 

Nandor doesn’t respond, doesn’t even look up, just waves Guillermo away with an absent flip of his hand, and so Guillermo heads off to continue his chores. 

That morning, when he gets to his room to get into bed, there’s another heart, sitting again on his pillow. A blue one with red writing. It says “I Luv U” 

Guillermo puts it with the rest of the hearts, in a little dish next to his bed, and crawls under the covers. He hugs a pillow to his chest and settles in for the night. Just before he falls asleep, he whispers, “Happy Valentine’s Day master,” and smiles happily. 

  
  
  
  
  



End file.
